Holocaust Was No Secret to Most Germans

PUBLIC RELATIONS CONTACT: Mike Silverthorn, (517) 774-3197; [email protected]

SOURCE: Eric Johnson, (517) 773-8327 (home)

HOLOCAUST WAS NO SECRET TO MOST GERMANS, WRITES AUTHOR OF NEW BOOK ON NAZI TERROR

MOUNT PLEASANT -- The silent complicity of German society in the slaughter of the Jews is described in a new book by a Central Michigan University history professor.

Eric Johnson's tome of terror is based on nearly 10 years of meticulous research and analysis of original Gestapo crime files from the 1930s and '40s. It was prompted in part by his own father's torture and imprisonment by the Nazi secret police.

"You know the saying, 'it takes a village to raise a child?' In Germany, it took a nation to murder the Jews," says Johnson, author of "The Nazi Terror: Gestapo, Jews and Ordinary Germans," published this month by Basic Books.

"It wasn't just a few people like the high-ranking Nazi officers or the concentration camp guards who knew about the Holocaust; people from all sectors of German society were involved," he said. "Common citizens ran the trains that transported the Jews to the camps. Bankers and insurance companies dealt with the finances of deported Jews. Even the cleaning ladies at the deportation centers knew what was happening. In addition, the BBC reported repeatedly on the murder of the Jews, and most German citizens listened to the BBC even though it was illegal.

"I argue that great numbers of German people knew that Jews were being murdered in the hundreds of thousands, that they knew about the concentration camps, that they knew about the gassings and shootings. And they simply told themselves that they didn't know," he said.

Johnson bases his findings on archival research of more than 1,100 original, often hand-written arrest and court cases of common German people who were interrogated by the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police, for supposed wrongdoings or for simply being a Jew. The arrest files included the official police reports and depositions of the accused and the accusers.

The author also conducted numerous surveys and interviews with German perpetrators, Jewish victims and ordinary Germans who experienced the Third Reich first hand.

"My goal was to understand more fully the whole system of terror that operated under Hitler and the Third Reich," he said. "The book focuses on the role of common German citizens, both those who opposed the regime and those who acted on behalf of the Gestapo.

"But one of the most important questions is: What did the Germans know about the Holocaust? I found clear evidence that the German people -- the common, ordinary citizens -- knew what was going on but did nothing about it," he said.

Johnson, who teaches CMU courses on the Holocaust and 20th century history, provides an exhaustive study of the nature of "Nazi terror" in Hitler's Germany:

-- He argues that the Gestapo had neither the power nor the desire to rule all of German society solely by terror. Rather, he describes the Gestapo as "a clever, efficient and nasty organization that chose its targets carefully." He shows that the Gestapo saved its worst terror tactics and torture only for groups it disliked, such as the Jews, communists, priests and homosexuals, but left the rest of the German people to control themselves. "Libeling Hitler in a private conversation or listening to illegal radio broadcasts -- these kinds of things could have led to a drastic punishment but usually didn't unless you were a Jew or a communist," he said.

-- Johnson describes what it was like to be interrogated by the Gestapo. "People of all kinds were interrogated, and everyone talked, even the bravest people you could imagine," he said. "If the Gestapo wanted information, you gave it, even the names of your mother or wife and where they lived. Nobody withstood the terror. The Gestapo used basic methods -- clubbing you over the head with the leg of a chair, holding a pistol to your head, smashing you in the face with a fist, showing you the gallows in the courtyard with a body swinging in the breeze. In the end even the most determined underground resistance worker, the most pious clergyman, the most upstanding people of all faiths, backgrounds, gender and age -- all simply talked."

-- The book describes the backgrounds and mentalities of the Gestapo officers themselves, including the heads of local Gestapo agencies, the rank-and-file officers and the heads of the Gestapo Jewish desks. "They could be very friendly and engaging, or they could be cunning, violent and brutal," said Johnson. "After the war, the Gestapo officers claimed they weren't really Nazis but only following orders. I don't believe that for a minute. They were happy to push the Nazi agenda. They never tried to resign. They got their biggest promotions after doing their most terrible deeds. If the people running the terror operations aren't held accountable in historical memory for the crimes of the Third Reich, how can we hold anybody guilty?"

Johnson also relates his father's encounter with the Gestapo. John Johnson was an American Air Force pilot during World War II who was shot down over Austria, interrogated by the Nazis and held in a prisoner-of-war camp at Stalag Luft I in Barth, located in the former East Germany on the Baltic Sea. He died in 1992.

"Though my father never talked to me about it, I sensed that his life was severely wounded from his experience as a prisoner," he said. "Perhaps my father told more than he thought he should have under torture. I wish I could have told my father that everybody talked when interrogated by the Gestapo.

"That is one reason why I pursued this research, which was for me at times quite painful and gut-wrenching," he said. "I wanted to know what it was like for my father and others to be seriously interrogated in this very terrifying society. I had to go back and study it, to live among the people who were enemies of my father and country at that time, and to read the records of people who were interrogated. And many people had worse experiences than my father."

Johnson is writing a second book titled "Life and Death in Nazi Germany: Germans and Jews Remember" based on interviews and surveys of surviving German Jews and elderly Germans who experienced the Third Reich as either victims of Nazi terror or as bystanders and even perpetrators of the terror.

Johnson's nearly 10 years of research in preparation for writing "The Nazi Terror" included five years as a visiting professor at the University of Cologne. His research has been supported by major grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany.

He also has received a Fulbright award and fellowships from Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study.

-mjs-